Everywhere were the same ridicule and contempt, and it was in this moment of failure that Dominic the Spaniard interposed, speaking earnestly to those who were with him of the contrast between the heretic ministers in their lives of poverty and self-denial with the luxury and worldliness of the local clergy, and even with the ostentatious parade of his fellow preachers. Because he had long practised austerities himself, wearing a hair shirt, fasting often, and denying himself every pleasure, the young Spaniard received a respectful hearing, and so fired the Cistercians with his enthusiasm that they sent away their horses and baggage-wagons, and set out on foot through the country to try and win the populace by different methods. With them went Dominic, barefoot, exulting in this opportunity of bearing witness in the face of danger to the Faith he held so precious. The attitude of the men and women of Languedoc towards the papal mission was no longer derisive but it remained hostile, for they also held their Faith sacred, while all the racial prejudice of the countryside was thrown into the balance of opposition to Rome. Thus converts were few, and angry gatherings at which stones were thrown at the strangers many; and so matters drifted on and the mission grew more and more discouraged. In 1208 occurred a violent crisis, for the papal legate, having excommunicated Count Raymond of Toulouse for appropriating certain Church lands and refusing to restore them, was murdered, and the Count himself implicated in the crime, seeing that, as in the case of Henry II and Becket, it had been his angry curses that had prompted some knights to do the deed. Innocent III at once declared the Count deposed, and preached a crusade against him and his subjects as heretics. Twenty years of bloodshed and cruelty followed; for under the command of the French Count Simon de Montfort, an utterly unscrupulous and brutal general, the orthodox legions of northern France gathered at the papal summons to stamp out the independence of the south that they had always hated as a rival. Languedoc, her nobles and people united, fought hard for her religious and political freedom; but the struggle was uneven, and she was finally forced into submission. Thirty thousand of her sons and daughters had perished, and with them the civilization and culture that had made the name of Provence glorious in mediaeval Europe. [Sidenote: The Albigensian Crusade]